The UW-Eau Claire women’s gymnastics team visited UW-Whitewater Saturday for their Wisconsin Intercollegiate Athletic Conference (WIAC) gymnastics meet. Being the away team, Eau Claire’s order of events went: bars, vault, floor and finally, beam. Although Eau Claire started strong, scoring points proved to be more challenging toward the end of the meet, leaving the final overall score 186.475-189.300.

The Blugold women’s gymnastics coach Jean Lisle said the team fell flat toward the end of the event.

“We started off really strong, near perfect actually,” Lisle said. “Our last two events we struggled a little bit, especially in the last event, but we’ve come up with some things to improve on.”

In the first event — bars — Whitewater secured the top three spots with scores of 9.725, 9.675 and 9.600. Eau Claire’s Megan Fayler took fourth place with a score of 9.550

The next event was the vault, the team’s highest-scoring event for the day, with a combined score of 47.250. While Whitewater once again took the first three spots, the battle for fourth place was hard-fought. Eau Claire’s athletes Becca Wilcox and Tori Erickson tied Whitewater’s Chloe Rehberg with a score of 9.525.

In the floor event, competition was fierce once again. Eau Claire’s Lauren Zurowski seized the second place spot with a score of 9.575. Erin Olson trailed close behind, tying Whitewater’s Lewa Evans with a score of 9.500.

The final event was the balance beam. This proved to be the hardest event for Eau Claire over the weekend. The results left Whitewater in first and third place. However, Tori Erickson secured the second place spot with a score of 9.650.

Lauralynn Anderson, a member of Eau Claire’s team, said they performed well despite a few missteps.

“I’d say overall the team performed really well,” Anderson said. “We had a few more falls on beam than we would’ve liked, but we had a very strong showing on the other three events.”

Lisle said she is looking to make some improvements after this meet. However, it’s not the girl’s technical skills she plans to work on.

“To be real honest, their physical gymnastics is really good,” Lisle said. “We’ve just got to get our minds to stay strong throughout the entire meet.”

The team will compete again at Hamline University (Minn.) at 6:30 p.m. on Friday Feb. 3. Lisle has a clear picture of what she hopes to see from her athletes.
“The thing that I would like to see is for us to be able to increase the mental side of the game,” Lisle said. “Being able to keep ourselves focused throughout the entire meet, not start strong and slowly drop off. That’s what we’ve been struggling with.”